The ministry said the bomb detonated next to a traffic post in Lebanon Square in Cairo's Mohandessin district, killing Maj. Mohammed Gamal Eddin.

A security official said the bomb was planted inside the traffic post and it exploded around 10 p.m. Cairo time. A second official, however, said unidentified assailants hurled the bomb from a bridge over the traffic post before fleeing. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the two accounts.

Three other people were injured including a senior police officer, the two officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

Security forces sealed off the area while searching for more bombs.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Daily Photo Galleries

Traveling by Jeep, boat and foot, Tribune-Review investigative reporter Carl Prine and photojournalist Justin Merriman covered nearly 2,000 miles over two months along the border with Mexico to report on coyotes — the human traffickers who bring illegal immigrants into the United States. Most are Americans working for money and/or drugs. This series reports how their operations have a major impact on life for residents and the environment along the border — and beyond.

By The Associated Press

Friday, April 18, 2014, 8:12 p.m.

CAIRO — Hesham Genena has fomented uproar by actually trying to do his job.

The head of one of Egypt's foremost government oversight agencies, he says he has uncovered billions of dollars' worth of corruption, involving some of the country's most untouchable institutions, including the police, intelligence agencies, and the judiciary.

As a result, rivals have barraged him in the media, calling him a sympathizer with the Muslim Brotherhood. His insistence on going public with allegations has led to two court cases against him, including one for insulting judges.

And he is struggling to translate his investigations into action. He has referred hundreds of cases to the general prosecutor but says less than 7 percent have been investigated. He has complained that security agencies bar his staff from inspecting their documents.

“I can't say they have stopped all investigations. But they are not responding to our requests,” Genena, 60, said of the prosecutors' office this week. “When I send a report, they should respond. They don't. We have no way of knowing.”

If the prosecutors won't follow through, he added, there's “only God after that.”

It was not possible to get a comment from the prosecutor's office, which rarely comments on cases open for investigation.

Genena — head of the Central Auditing Organization, a state agency tasked with overseeing the government's finances — has given a rare public look into what he calls a pervasive culture of corruption in Egypt. For decades, Egyptians have complained of graft by officials. It was one of the factors that fueled the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Rarely has there been a public drive to go after perpetrators, particularly senior officials.

“Many officials look at me and say, ‘He is crazy for what he is doing,'” Genena told AP, speaking in his Cairo office. “What I'm seeking to do is give a shock to society, to fix it.”

Egypt is “a country about to vanish because of corruption by successive regimes,” he said.

For years, government oversight agencies, including the CAO, have been purely cosmetic, Genena said. Their reports were “merely ink on paper” — unless authorities wanted to pursue a suspected official “as a form of extortion,” he said.

If an agency found suspected graft, embezzlement or corrupt business deals, he said, it would send a report to the government ministry where the violation was believed to be taking place, but rarely ensured the issue was addressed or pressed officials to investigate.

In contrast, since being named to the position in September 2012, Genena has been trying to bring real action.

In February, he announced at a press conference that he had referred more than 900 cases to the prosecutor general or two other bodies, the administrative prosecutor and Illegal Gains Agency. Less than 7 percent of those cases are known to have been put under investigation or taken to trial, according to the figures he gave at the press conference.

In one case, Genena told AP, investigations revealed that some $3 billion dollars was misappropriated in land deals by officials from the police, intelligence agencies, the judiciary and prosecutors.

In another, he reopened a 3-year-old case over allegations that members of an advisory board for the state national communications regulator — which included the justice minister at the time — had received some $14 million in financial compensation.

What is unprecedented in Genena's move is his willingness to investigate so-called “sovereign agencies,” the term referring to the most important and unquestionable arms of the state, such as the police, intelligence, judiciary and the presidency. He has been empowered by the constitution passed this year, which encourages the fight against corruption and supervision of state bodies.

There may be limits, however.

Notably, Genena has not made allegations against the most powerful state body of all, the military. The military took the unheard-of step of allowing the CAO under Genena to review the accounts of its extensive business holdings. Speaking to the AP, Genena said that his review had found no violations in the military's books.

His other moves have brought a heavy backlash. The former justice minister, who left office in a recent Cabinet reshuffle, accused Genena of insulting him, prompting prosecutors in February to refer Genena to trial.

After Genena publicly criticized the Judges Club, an association of judges, for not allowing its employees to be inspected, the head of the club accused him of insulting the judiciary, prompting another trial for Genena, which holds its next session next week.

If convicted in either case, it could fuel a drive by his opponents to impeach him.

In the media, a chorus of government supporters accuse him of sympathizing with the Brotherhood, which was branded by the government as a terrorist organization since the military ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi last summer.

Prominent pro-military journalist and former lawmaker Mostafa Bakry said Genena was spreading “lies” tantamount to “blatant incitement against state institutions for the benefit of the Brotherhood.”

Ahmed Moussa, a TV presenter known with strong ties to security establishment, said Genena's allegations “sabotaged the economy.”

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